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Hey all just a quick question.
I am assembling my skeletons currently and I am wondering whether to run them as sword/shield or spear/shield?
What are the key differences between the two?
Cheers.

Mansta wrote:Hey all just a quick question.
I am assembling my skeletons currently and I am wondering whether to run them as sword/shield or spear/shield?
What are the key differences between the two?
Cheers.

Skeletons with sword and shield suck in combat, barely hit anything and die really fast.
Skeletons with spear and shield get more sucky attacks, barely hit anything, and die a little faster.

-Matt

I lol'd.
But Matt is right.

The difference -

Sword and Shield gets a 6+ ward save in hand to hand combat (so even if they get plastered by a Hulking Gigantomus with a Sword of Evercleaving, they have a 16.667% chance of shrugging it off). They will attack in two ranks in a non-horde arrangement.

Spear and shield does not get the ward save in hand to hand (spears are two handed weapons, so you can't use the shield at the same time), so they'll get smeared by anything with a strength of 4 or better (5 if they're wearing light armor). The shields are effective against missile fire, however. They will attack in three ranks in a non-horde arrangement.

I usually run shields and spears because a) it feels tomb-kingy to me, which is pretty much how I do everything, b) it looks cool, c) blocks of skeletons need those extra ranks of attacks because they can't hit the broadside of a barn, and d) ward saves are overrated when you can just raise the ones that got re-killed.

spears are not 2 handed in the BRB this edition. You just only get the ward for hand weapon shield. you will still get a 5+ save for light armor and a shield in close combat and against shooting.

The difference is deciding between a potential 16% increase in survivability versus an extra rank of attacks.

Since you can simply summon more skeletons via invok or tomb blad, I prefer to take spears for the extra attacks.

Keep in mind skeletons are still technically worse than ghouls, and if there was a ghoul version of the tomb blade I'd run more of them.

Just remember, Skeletons, Zombies, Ghouls, or Wolves....whatever you choose.... take larger groups. Make sure you have enough mages to hand the invoke casting. Everything VC has practically has a 16% survival rate lol. Thats what necromancers are for. The key is to think about how many will die in each round of combat on average....make sure you have enough that you have two ranks of attack left over after you get pwned. (you prolly strike last unless you use corpse carts). and you may want enough to survive two rounds of combat without being invoked (taking into account it getting dispelled is wizard failure or just more important units/spells to tend to). or its a waste of points.


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P.S. Aerethon, Ghouls are the bomb diggity! Vampire with summon ghouls combined with undead horde (mass quantities of ghouls) and ghoulkin you can swamp with 7 wide ranks (29 attacks poison)

Since skeleton attacks are kind of crappy, 6+ ward will give more combat resolution and keep your Skeleton unit tying things up for much longer.

Hand weapon and shield is the way to go in my opinion, other things in your army kill stuff. The job is skeletons is to hold things up and bunker characters.

Plus you save one point per model!

One tip that I got told was to summon a horde of zombies and then cast purple sun on top of it, POW, lots of power dice for you to play with.

Zombie hordes are great for running block on enemy units IMO. You can "tar pit" some of their regulars or intercept some flankers. I always double up on the horde spell on em though. So that the unit doesnt die right away (dont wanna just raise em 50pts)

I would add that spears are the winner if you are using the Helm of Command properly. Watching 3 ranks of WS7 attacks is nasty.

heacy hitter wrote:One tip that I got told was to summon a horde of zombies and then cast purple sun on top of it, POW, lots of power dice for you to play with.

I thought that required living models? Or at least enemy ones?

Well if you can manage to cast mindrazor on the unit and get them under the influence of the helm of commandment paired with the hatred banner Skeletons can become a very nasty unit.

I proposed this to one of my friends, and to make it a unit of 100... because why not?

But, hand weapon shield really is the way to go. Why pay points to lose a ward save? And you should be relying on characters/ghouls/grave guard to inflict damage, not skeletons, so the extra attacks are pretty much meaningless.

The Grog wrote:

heacy hitter wrote:One tip that I got told was to summon a horde of zombies and then cast purple sun on top of it, POW, lots of power dice for you to play with.

I thought that required living models? Or at least enemy ones?

It just requires wounds, does not differentiate between living or dead, friend or foe. So yes, a mass summon and then a Purple Sun could potentially work to give you a bunch of dice, but then you cannot cast summon or Sun again during that phase. I guess that's fine if you have a bunch of other spells you want to cast, though.